Hearts Dividing
by tromana
Summary: Nobody can doubt Jane’s love for his wife and that Lisbon has given her heart and soul to her job. Can they? Jane/Lisbon. SPOILERS FOR 2.01


**A/N: SPOILERS FOR 2.01 REDEMPTION.** This is also my last fic for my **dailyfics** challenge for this signup. Aww... I may have another go in the future, but not for a while. x tromana

**Author:** tromana  
**Rating:** T  
**Characters:** Jane/Lisbon  
**Disclamer:** I don't own the Mentalist and I don't want to. I have complete faith in Bruno Heller.  
**Summary:** Nobody can doubt Jane's love for his wife and that Lisbon has given her heart and soul to her job. Can they?  
**Spoilers: **2.01 Redemption  
**Notes:** Title borrowed with thanks from Miss Peg. If you like Neighbours, I recommend it. Written for LJ community **dailyfics**. Day 7. Prompt: Divide

**Hearts Dividing**

Nobody can doubt Patrick Jane's loyal, unswerving love for his deceased wife and child.

The ring he still wears on his finger manages to remind him that the good times weren't merely a hallucination. That he had been happy once upon a time. As his fingers trace over the gold, he can remember the day that he and his wife exchanged their vows and the simple pieces of jewellery. He remembers her beatific beam when she told him that they were expecting. Sees his little girl in his mind's eye as she giggled and laughed while he tried to teach her how to read a bicycle. Recalls their laughs and smiles and tears and everything that made up his little family's life. He can even remember the blazing rows with a wistful smile now. The range and depth of their emotions is what made their time together so special.

There's also the photograph he keeps in his wallet. He hasn't ever showed it to anybody else, he doesn't dare. It's just a simple snap of his little girl and wife playing together. Neither had realised that the picture had been taken, but the look of ecstasy on their faces had made it simply perfect in Jane's eyes. Part of him wishes he had the courage to share it with the world, like a proud husband and father should. To tell those around him stories about them, to make them feel alive again through his words. However, the other, less rational part believes that if he does so, it will taint it. He has, after all, always been rather possessive to say the least, so the sharing of memories isn't something that comes naturally to him.

Of course, there is one emotion regarding his family that Jane is more than happy to share with the world. And that is his boiling rage for the man that took away said wife and child. Barely suppressed, it simmers underneath his skin, only becoming obvious when the serial killer is within his grasp. It terrifies those around him, unsurprisingly so. His fervour, need, for revenge reaches such depths that it's impossible to know just how he is going to react when Red John is on the scene. If Jane misses him by the skin of his teeth just one more time, the people around him fear for his sanity. They all want to see justice served, for no one doubts that Red John is an evil man and that he needs to be caught. Jane is oblivious to the feelings of others, they're secondary to his target whenever the serial killer is involved. He's only just beginning to learn to appreciate them when Red John is not on the scene.

Nobody can doubt the love he still has for his wife. Apart from, maybe, Patrick Jane himself.

For now, there _is_ somebody else on the scene. She is stubborn, abrasive and bossy. Whenever Jane does something 'wrong' in her eyes, she sighs heavily and berates him like he's a naughty schoolboy. That means she spends the majority of her time telling him off, begging him to be sensible and to not create too much of a mess. Teresa Lisbon barely understands the concept of waiting and the idea that patience is a virtue is completely lost on her. She has more layers than an onion and protects herself with such intensity that it means most men just give up on trying to understand the woman she keeps hidden. It isn't that she doesn't want to be loved, it's that she doesn't trust her heart with anyone. How can she if she barely trusts her work colleagues to do their jobs properly?

Despite all that, she cleans up after him with such loyalty that unnerves him somewhat. She is fiercely protective of her team and always has their backs, regardless of the rubbish they throw back in her face. Though she'd try to deny it, she appreciates the small gestures rather than the big, elaborate ones. She still has that origami frog in her drawer and a slight, embarrassed smile creeps onto her face whenever he hands her some strawberries. And Lisbon is trying her hardest to trust him, which he appreciates. Underneath the harsh layers she has had to develop, Jane knows that she is a lovely woman. She shows it unwittingly often enough, anyway. He knows that if he let himself, Jane could quite easily fall in love with Teresa Lisbon. It's even getting to the stage where he is wondering whether that is out of his control now.

Can he really love two women at once?

***

Nobody can doubt that Teresa Lisbon has given her heart and soul to her job.

The day she made senior agent is what she rates as being the best day of her life, closely followed by the day she was headhunted to join the CBI in the first place. She can remember starting there all too well and meeting Minelli and Bosco for the first time. How she became terribly aware that the CBI was terribly masculine-dominated and that if she was going to get anywhere she was going to have to work at least ten times as hard as her colleagues. It never phased her, she was used to hard work and thrived under pressure. Teresa Lisbon never backs away from a challenge, after all. Family and friends never quite understood why she had to sacrifice so much in order to do well there. Mostly, they never understood why she wanted to in the first place when she should have been looking for a husband and should have been contemplating starting a family.

She is an effective leader and everyone knows it. Most of the men at the CBI are terrified of her, the few remaining wish they could tame her. She can focus on leading a team and still find the time to try and control Patrick Jane. Lisbon's the only person he bothers to listen to, which at least said something about her abilities. Naturally, she always says it is all down to the fact that she had an amazing tutor, the best even, in Senior Agent Sam Bosco. The majority of people who know her believe she has long since surpassed him. Even Sam believes that, much to his irritation, because he still finds it difficult to remind himself that she isn't the Teresa he once knew anymore.

Nobody can doubt whether or not the effort that Teresa Lisbon has put into her career has been worth it. Apart from Teresa Lisbon herself, of course.

There are times when she doubts herself. It's only natural but sometimes she feels like she is going backwards with her career. Like she's gone from being a lead agent to someone who is merely a babysitter for an overgrown child. It doesn't help that her team appears to have more loyalty to said overgrown child than their boss these days, either. But really, she knows, it is all her own doing. She should have given him tighter leash, been less liberal with him. Since losing the Red John case, Lisbon knows that she needs to earn back the trust of Minelli and the other agents, not just to get her career on track but for her sanity as well. Having sacrificed so much for her job to date, it's all she can think of doing now.

Yet, she doesn't know if she can stop herself from being so soft on Patrick Jane. Though she likes to set herself apart from other women, there is something about that gaze of his that makes her feel weak at the knees. Same with that bright, sunny smile he wears as a mask, a painful reminder of the fact that he is hiding so much. That in reality, he is such a broken soul. Most importantly, he challenges her and trying to understand _him_ is a challenge in itself. After all, Lisbon still can't even tell if he wants to be saved from himself at all, so would it be worth her time and effort at all? Her mind vehemently states that no, he wouldn't be worth it. He's still in love with his wife, desperately so. If he wasn't, he would have long since given up the idea of vengeance and he would have taken off that goddamn ring years ago. But her heart wants to fall in love with him. It has been years since she has last felt so deeply for a man and that time, everything had gone terribly wrong that time and she was still hurting from it. Jane's gifts didn't help. How could you not begin to fall a little in love with someone who hired a pony for a day just to make you smile?

The higher up the career ladder she had climbed, the less time she had for anything other than work. She had known when she initially became a police officer that it wasn't a career that fitted in nicely with a social life and she had always been alright with that. Lisbon had never been one for social niceties anyway. Truth be told, as her biological clock ticked ever onwards, she had been beginning to feel lonely of late. And what was wrong with listening to her heart for a change? She has spent her whole life being the sensible, strong one so surely she deserved to throw caution into the wind for once?

But does she really have time for romance and her job?

end


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